Java and .NET Security

There are many obvious similarities in the Java and .NET platforms. This week the O'Reilly Network sites ONJava and ONDotnet jointly published the first in a series of four articles by Denis Piliptchouk on Java vs. .NET Security. In this first article, Denis looks at configuration and three aspects of code containment: Verification, Application Isolation, and Language Features. He concludes that "Java offers a lot of advantages with its configurability. When it comes to code containment, both platforms have pretty strong offerings, with .NET having slightly more choices and being more straightforward to use."

Sometimes you just need to rip through a text document looking for a particular match. Since J2SE 1.4, Java developers have been able to add regular expression techniques to the toolbox. If you're new to regular expressions, start with Hetal C. Shah's article, Regular Expressions in J2SE before heading to Friedl's classic book "Mastering Regular Expressions" or Tony Stubblebine's "Regular Expression Pocket Reference". Shah writes that the regex package "is quite handy and useful to the developers of search, extract, and replace systems such as search engines, rule-based data formation and transformation engines, EAI, and so on. Regular expressions are also used in extracting meaningful information from large chunks of text data". For kicks, you may want to also check out an article I wrote a while back for O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter that used this package for working with Apple iCal files.

Our java.net featured article is Joshua Marinacci's Taglibs: Designing Web APIs for the Non-Programmer. Joshua writes about providing tags for an intelligent but non-technical audience. For example, his calendar tag allows people to easily enter one-time or recurring events. His tree menu displays a file browser in a friendly, easily customizable way. Of course, as a bonus, he posts all of the code he uses.

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We also feature sponsored content from BEA Systems on Handling Mixed Content in a Strongly Typed World. Steve Traut writes that you probably have used XML to represent data and also have probably used XML to represent text. "But if you've ever taken a programming model that's designed for one purpose and tried to bend it to the other, there's a good chance you've cursed a bit over it. That line between data and text can feel like a wall." Traut uses XMLBeans "to keep the strongly typed access that's best suited for data while also handling the mixed content that comes with narrative text."